Scholarship at UWindsor

Failings of Strong Moral Particularism

University of Windsor

In this paper I will be investigating the possibilities involved with and the consequences of accepting a particularist approach to ethics. Such particularist approaches that reject the use of principles in moral decision making are becoming more popular in contemporary ethical debates underlining modern care ethics, feminist relational ethics, contextualism, and Maclntyre's virtue ethics among others. I will argue that extreme particularism that utterly rejects principles as defended by Jonathan Dancy is an untenable position that does not capture how humans make moral decisions and moreover would remove any hope of being able to discuss morality meaningfully. In order to do this I will look at Dancy's arguments for particularism from his conception of a holism of reasons, and compare them with the arguments by Brad Hooker, Rodger Crisp and Martha Naussbaum that aim to show why particularism is doomed to failure. While I believe Dancy cannot defend his position I will argue that a softer conception of particularism as can be seen in relational ethics, one that accepts some principles that enforce a situational attentiveness and sensitivity to context and narrative, can be a viable alternative that keeps the advantages of particularism while avoiding Dancy's failings.